Archive for the ‘Aston MArtin’ Category

Aston Martin is the latest car maker to announce it’s going to move to an all-hybrid line up. CEO Andy Palmer has told the Financial Times that “We will be 100 per cent hybrid by the middle of the 2020s.” Palmer also told the FT that he expects about 25 percent of Aston Martin sales will be EVs by 2030. A similarly bold announcement was made by Volvo earlier this summer; however in this case Aston Martin will continue to sell non-hybrid versions of its cars as an option.

The first all-electric Aston Martin will be the RapidE, a sleek four-seater due in 2019. But that will be a limited-run model, with only 115 planned. There’s also the hybrid Valkyrie hypercar in the works, an F1 car for the road that’s being designed by Aston Martin in conjunction with Red Bull Racing’s Adrian Newey. But there will be more mainstream (if such a word can apply) hybrid and battery EV Aston Martins coming too. Like Volvo, some of these will just be 48V mild hybrids.

The build-up to this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance continues apace. Yesterday was Infiniti’s turn, with its gorgeous, retro-styled electric Prototype 9 concept car, while today the headlines go to Aston Martin. Once again, the British carmaker teamed up with Italian design house Zagato, this time on a pair of limited-edition versions of a rather old model: the Vanquish Zagato Speedster and Vanquish Zagato Shooting Brake.

That now makes a total of four different Zagato-bodied versions of the venerable GT car, for the two companies have previously collaborated on a Vanquish Zagato Coupe and Vanquish Zagato Volante (which means “convertible” in Aston Martinese).

Picture the scene: it’s a few years in the future. James Bond is on a mission in Amsterdam, or Paris, or some other forward-thinking European city that has just banned internal combustion vehicles from the city center. But Spectre is up to something, and our intrepid hero—who doesn’t like taxis or public transport—needs to find out what’s happening while arriving in style. Commander Bond is in luck, for he is behind the wheel of an electric Aston Martin, the RapidE.

The venerable British carmaker announced on Tuesday that its first electric vehicle will go on sale in 2019. “RapidE represents a sustainable future in which Aston Martin’s values of seductive style and supreme performance don’t merely co-exist alongside a new zero-emission powertrain, but are enhanced by it,” said Dr. Andy Palmer, Aston Martin’s president and CEO, in a statement.

Pity the humble hypercar. For a brief moment in time you’re the hottest thing on four wheels, splashed across thousands of desktop wallpapers (and bedroom walls, if car posters are still a thing). But these days that kind of star power doesn’t last long. Blame the companies that build them. You’d think it would be hard to top something like a McLaren P1, a hybrid with 903hp (673kW) and a $1.6 million price tag, but that’s just what McLaren intends to do with the next car in its “Ultimate” series, the BP23.

The BP23 is still two years off, and details are scarce on the ground. It will be a hybrid and have even more power than the P1, and more advanced aerodynamics.

The AM-RB 001 shares a lead designer with the Red Bull Racing F1 car in the background—Adrian Newey.

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Seemingly, there comes a time in every great Formula 1 car designer’s life when he (and sadly they are almost always a he) gets a little bored of the straightjacket of rules that bound creativity. Inevitably, thoughts soon turn to applying some of that race-bred knowledge to “the ultimate road car,” sometimes to extremely good effect. Gordon Murray and the McLaren F1 is the best known example, although Ferrari’s F50 deserves a mention too. Its V12 is based on an actual Formula 1 engine, and that engine is fully stressed (i.e. rigidly mounted to the carbon fiber tub, with the suspension attached to it). Now Adrian Newey and Red Bull Racing—along with Aston Martin—want to join this club with the AM-RB 001.

Now, Aston Martin is a company that is no stranger to the hypercar, having built the One-77 and more recently the Vulcan. But that car is not street legal. Its racing experience comes from competing against versions of the company’s production cars at Le Mans and elsewhere. The AM-RB 001 on the other hand was born in more rarefied air, which is where Newey and Red Bull enter the picture.

Newey is probably the most successful engineer working in Formula 1 right now. His designs have won 10 World Drivers Championships and 10 World Constructors’ Championships since 1991 (first at Williams, then McLaren, and with Red Bull Racing since 2006). But Formula 1 recently got a bit boring for Newey. Fears that he would leave (possibly for the challenge of working at Ferrari) earned him a pair of golden handcuffs from the team, with an expanded portfolio (Red Bull Advanced Technologies) giving him some creative freedom outside the sport.

You might think the Volkswagen group would be wise to keep a low profile at the moment, in the wake of the devastating diesel engine emissions scandal that has yet to play out to its conclusion. But no, the news from the Geneva motor show is dominated by VW group in the shape of its new hypercar, the Bugatti Chiron.

The replacement for the remarkable but frankly absurd Veyron is all the more remarkable, not least for managing to get built at all in a time when VW has pledged to restrict itself to essential, core activities. It’s remarkable, too, in that it takes virtually every Veyron metric and bests it.

The Bugatti Chiron

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Bugatti Chiron

The Chiron is (slightly) longer and wider, significantly taller, and about 150kg heavier than the Veyron, despite weight-saving measures including the use of a full carbon composite structure, a carbon intake manifold and engine cover, titanium brake callipers, and a titanium exhaust system.

The new Aston Martin DB11. You’d be forgiven for thinking you’d seen it before.

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The Geneva Auto Show has just gotten underway in Europe, and we should have a full report on all the stars of the show later this week. But ahead of the show, images have leaked of two of its expected stars, Porsche’s new 911R, and Aston Martin’s DB11.

First up is the “new” Porsche, which is actually new version of an existing model. When the latest 911 GT3 debuted in 2014, it drew a bit of criticism from purists because it meant the loss of a manual gearbox. Even though racing Porsches have been semi-automatic for years, many driving enthusiasts want nothing to do with flappy paddles. The 911R should satisfy them—or at least it will if it becomes a regular model in the lineup. If recent history is anything to go by, though, it will more likely be a limited edition that sells out instantly and then commands a hefty premium on the used car market.

Underneath that sloping rear deck—bereft of wings or spoilers other than the retractable one fitted to the regular 911—is a 4L naturally aspirated flat-six engine from the GT3 RS, giving the 911R almost 500hp. Compared to the bewigged GT3 and GT3 RS, the 911R—named for an old Porsche road-legal racer—is meant to be focused on driver enjoyment rather than all-out lap times.